Archives for July 2012

On July 4th Eve (if there is such a thing) I was determined to stay up late because I wanted to sleep in late on Wednesday for the holiday. My plan seemed to be going smoothly until I randomly woke up at 6:45. I tried to go back to sleep, but I had this desire to get a run in before it got too hot. “Oh, you don’t need to run anymore,” I thought to myself. “You’ve been doing such a good job of exercising this year, take a break.” This is what prompted me to get out of bed and do a 3-mile run.

Why did that thought process have that effect on me? Because it is worrisome, and I think we give in to that kind of thought process far too easily and far too often. When we leave school at whatever level, we think, “Ah, well you’ve put in x number of years learning. That’s good enough.” When you exercise and start to lose weight, it’s so very easy to say, “Ah, well, you’ve more than worked out enough to earn this brownie sundae.” When your kids reach 18, you might have a fleeting thought that you’ve taken them to adulthood and so you’re done.

Factually, as soon as you start proclaiming to yourself that you’re done with one thing or the other, you are giving up on yourself. Think of it this way. After you leave school, have you learned everything in the world you could ever want to learn? After exercising for awhile and improving your eating habits, have you gotten into the best shape and the best mindset you could ever possibly achieve? My guess is probably not. There is always another author to read. There is always another field of study to explore. There is always a new exercise to try or a new level to test yourself on. Always.

Refusing to say “I’m done” is not about ambition. It’s about a commitment to living life to the fullest. It’s about leaving all of the doors open, and all of the windows, too, for that matter. It’s about remembering that you are human, imperfect but capable always of improving.

Yes, it’s true, I’ve been doing a lot of exercising since the beginning of the year and I’ve lost about ten pounds. But I still can’t easily complete a half-marathon. I still have a lot of Yoga and Zumba moves that I need to figure out, and then there’s a whole new layer of stuff I can’t even imagine trying to do right now. And besides, I’m not where I want to be fitness-wise yet. So I woke up and I ran.

What is something you have proclaimed you’re “done” with? Are you sure you’re done, or did you give in a little bit to that nagging voice that wanted you to quit? Maybe it’s time to revisit that skill or that field or that…whatever it is. Maybe it’s time to expand yourself. Maybe it’s time to recommit.

What do you think?

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Today is the birthday of the United States of America. I often wonder on this day, as I do on many other holidays, whether people really contemplate what today is all about. America is one of the younger countries in the world, comparatively speaking, but I fear we have already lost a lot of the importance tied to what today really should, by all rights, mean.

Today, I’m thinking about what it means to me to be an American. Like many Americans, I have parts of my family that can be traced back for generations. My ancestors ranged from Rhode Island and Pennsylvania down to Virginia and Tennessee. Somewhere along the way Native Americans (Cherokee) came into my family tree, and they had been here for thousands of years. But also like many Americans, I have parts of my family that have only been American for a short time. In fact, five of my eight great-grandparents were not born in the US. Four were born in Russia and one was born in Switzerland. I know precious little about what their lives were like. I have very few family relics. What items we do have, the meaning has been lost in most cases. As an American I’m sort of like a newly potted plant. I have some deep roots, but not a whole lot. I lean on my identity as an American and can’t depend on a sense of self coming from the past.

As an American on America’s birthday, I am worried for my country. That might seem strange to those of you who feel like the US thinks of ourselves as indestructible. That’s part of the problem. But I fear most that hatred is beginning to reign supreme. Perhaps hatred has always been at the core of the US. African Americans and Native Americans would likely say so. The hatred I see now is not seemingly based so much on skin color, but rather on a sense of people needing to feel that their views are 100% accepted. In the Ken Burns Civil War series, historian Shelby Foote notes that Americans have always been masterful at compromise. I fear we’re losing that. I fear we are losing our capacity for civil discourse. Especially when it comes to the issues that matter most.

I have a lot of wishes for America. I hope that we can continue to emphasize our capacity to do great good. I hope we can come through this election season as a single country, though I’m beginning to wonder. I hope we can make peace with our past and build for a stronger future. I hope Abraham Lincoln remains Abraham Lincoln and not just a vampire slayer. I hope we can remember how big we are and that there is room for plenty of perspectives.

I have a lot of hopes for America. I have a lot of worries, too. My worries for my country stem from the love of my country. I want it to be the best. I want it to be what our founding fathers dreamed it could be in 1776. Onwards and upwards, America. Seize the Day.

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Have you ever watched The Joy Luck Club? There are so many tremendous scenes, but one has always stuck in my head. One of the daughters whom the movie focuses on has been left by her husband. He comes by to visit and to see their daughter and she always makes him his favorite dessert – peanut butter pie. Her mother is staying with her one day when she is buying the fixings. The mother chastises her. “You are saying that you are worth nothing more than this pie he gets to eat. That is your value.” You can watch the full part of this plot here.

The real problem Rose has is that she thinks from the first time that she meets her husband (ex-husband) that he is better than her. He’s cute, he comes from a well-known family, he’s rich. The fact that he comes on to her immediately flusters her even though she’s brilliant in her own right, and she spends most of their life together losing herself in the wake of whatever he wants. I have a feeling that in one way or another, this story would resonate with a lot of people. You are going along and all of a sudden a person whom you feel is really important starts to pay attention to you. You feel flattered, flustered, excited, confused, lucky, even. And you are instantly hit with a worry. “What if they find out I’m not good enough?”

People come up with all sorts of ways to fight off what they feel is that inevitability. Some people make things like Rose does in the movie. Some people change their religions or change their personalities. In the worst case scenario, some people even succumb to abusive relationships, almost as if they expected things to go that way. The other person is so much better than them, after all.

Until you value yourself enough, you will signal to people that your worth is only in how you measure it. If you change your religion, your value is only as good as your new beliefs are deep. If you make things your value is only the value of those things. If you let yourself remain in an abusive situation, your value is the same as a punching bag.

When you find your value, when you know it and embrace it, you will no longer feel that nagging feeling that you need to make up for something. You will no longer feel “lucky” when people like you. You will no longer be surprised that people whom you like and respect like and respect you back – and for who you truly are. You won’t need pie or an act or anything but yourself.

What are you telling people your value is? Are you sure that’s the message you want to send? Are you sure that’s the message you want to believe?

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When George B. McClellan took over the Army of the Potomac in 1862, he could not believe how disorganized and unprofessional the men were. They did not report to their posts, most had no training of any kind, and a lot of them were drunk. In a rather short period of time, McClellan trained them, gave them new shiny uniforms, and made them proud. He told them that he felt towards them as a father feels towards his children, and he told them that he was going to take care of them.

The problem, of course, is that these men were not just “sons.” They were men who needed to go to the Confederate States and do some fighting. They had to be risked. That was what they had volunteered for. But McClellan was not interested in seeing his men cut to pieces. Instead he had them dig trenches. He waited, telling Lincoln and others in DC that the force he was facing was too big (he actually had a force that far outnumbered anything the Confederacy could muster). Unfortunately, McClellan and his men could only win the war and reap the rewards if they did what they most did not want to do. They had to go out and let people shoot at them. They had to shoot back. The war could not be won until the war had officially begun.

In life, we often must take steps that we greatly fear or that we greatly regret we have to take. These things stand in our way, preventing us from reaching the end that we ultimately are hoping for. Getting the job of your dreams means that you have to go to your boss, who you really adore, and hand him/her your resignation. Allowing your child to grow up may mean letting them participate in the wackiness that can be the public school system. Going on a big trip may mean skimping and saving on other things for a long time.  Saving a life may mean risking your own.

How do you decide to plow ahead through these steps you fear, these steps you really do not want to take? You must ask yourself if what you are striving for is worth the sacrifice. General Ulysses S. Grant didn’t want to see his men die, but more than that, he didn’t want the war to languish on. He wanted the Union to win and he wanted to speed up the process. To make that happen he sacrificed many lives. Rosa Parks didn’t want to get arrested or abused, but it was more important to her at that time to take a stand by staying seated. Is what you are striving for worth that turmoil?

The second question to ask yourself is how you can prepare for the steps you do not want to take. Who can you call on for reinforcements? How can you lessen the blow? How can you reduce the strain those steps will take on you? Strategizing almost always makes things appear less scary. Knowing there is an end-game will help you endure.

What are you stopping yourself from doing in the face of steps you do not want to take? How can you overcome that hesitation to get where you want – or need – to go?

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Have you ever seen the movie Being John Malkovich? The main character, Craig (played by John Cusack) has always wanted to be a famous puppeteer, but he “pushes the issues” in his street corner shows and can’t seem to get a break. Through a truly bizarre twist of fate, Craig discovers a portal that takes you into John Malkovich’s brain. Craig realizes this is the ultimate kind of puppetry – and John Malkovich the actor becomes a living breathing puppet.

At one point, Craig (as Malkovich) visits Malkovich’s agent. Craig makes Malkovich say, “I want to stop being an actor. I want to be a puppeteer.” The agent does not even hesitate. “Great, you’re a puppeteer. I’ll make some calls.”

I think about this scene often, even though it’s really pretty silly and even though it’s from a movie that’s on the stranger side of the spectrum. I think about people who are pretty done with what they are doing. For a lot of people, it seems like the feeling is, “I need to destroy what I have been doing to start fresh.” But the scene from Being John Malkovich makes me think there is an alternative. “John Malkovich” used his power as an actor to change careers rather than walking away from Hollywood altogether. Even though it’s fictional, I think there’s something to that notion.

For a real-world example, consider this very blog site. Now if you’re new here, you might not know this, but for the last two years, this blog was very different from the way it is now. It was pretty much all over the place, for one thing. It was mostly about social media, with some “musings” on marketing, current events, and other stuff. Throughout 2012 I’d been feeling sort of done with that approach. I wanted to have more of a focus and I wanted to talk about other stuff here. I had two options. I could just delete my site and start over or I could rebuild here, keeping some elements (like all of the writing I’ve done over the last two years) but changing the look and feel of the site. I didn’t have to take subscribers to a new URL I didn’t have to destroy my online identity. I simply rebuilt using things that were still in existence.

How can you apply this to your life? Perhaps you have a job you’re not super happy about. Are there ways to take what you are doing and revamp it so that you can feel more content? Are you in a relationship that is rocky? Instead of walking away from the person, are there parts of the relationship that are good that you can focus on and then go from there?

There is a picture that has been circulating around Facebook. It’s a picture of an older couple and it says, “People ask how we’ve stayed together for so long. We come from an era when if something was broken, you fixed it.” There are some things, of course, that are not fixable. But sometimes I think we give up a little too early these days. Sometimes I think we destroy because it can seem easier than rebuilding. What do you think?

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